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  1. Stackups
  2. Utilities
  3. Secrets Management
  4. Secrets Management
  5. Docker Secrets vs Keywhiz

Docker Secrets vs Keywhiz

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Keywhiz
Keywhiz
Stacks12
Followers50
Votes3
GitHub Stars2.6K
Forks216
Docker Secrets
Docker Secrets
Stacks42
Followers114
Votes8

Docker Secrets vs Keywhiz: What are the differences?

## Introduction
When considering secure storage solutions for sensitive information in a containerized environment, Docker Secrets and Keywhiz are two options that come to mind. However, there are key differences between the two that should be considered before making a decision.

## 1. Docker Secrets: Lightweight and Integrated
Docker Secrets provides a lightweight and integrated solution for managing sensitive data within Docker containers. It allows for seamless integration with Docker's orchestration tools, making it easy to manage secrets at scale directly within the Docker ecosystem.

## 2. Keywhiz: Centralized and Robust
Keywhiz, on the other hand, offers a more centralized and robust approach to secret management. It provides a dedicated server for storing and accessing secrets, offering additional features such as access control and auditing capabilities that may be critical in certain security-sensitive environments.

## 3. Docker Secrets: Restricted to Docker Environment
One limitation of Docker Secrets is that it is tightly integrated with Docker and may not be as flexible for use outside of Docker environments. This can be a concern for organizations looking to manage secrets across diverse platforms beyond Docker.

## 4. Keywhiz: Scalability and Customization
Keywhiz excels in scalability and customization options, allowing users to tailor the secret management system to their specific needs and scale it accordingly. This level of flexibility can be advantageous for organizations with complex secret management requirements.

## 5. Docker Secrets: Limited Access Control
While Docker Secrets provides basic access control mechanisms for managing who can access secrets within Docker containers, it may not offer the granular control and fine-tuned permissions that some organizations require for more sensitive data.

## 6. Keywhiz: Advanced Access Control and Auditing
Keywhiz stands out in its advanced access control and auditing capabilities, allowing for granular control over who can access specific secrets and providing detailed audit logs for tracking access to sensitive information. This level of security and transparency can be crucial for compliance-conscious organizations.

In Summary, Docker Secrets offers a lightweight and integrated solution within the Docker ecosystem, while Keywhiz provides a more centralized, scalable, and secure approach to secret management with advanced access control and auditing features.

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Detailed Comparison

Keywhiz
Keywhiz
Docker Secrets
Docker Secrets

Keywhiz is a secret management and distribution service that is now available for everyone. Keywhiz helps us with infrastructure secrets, including TLS certificates and keys, GPG keyrings, symmetric keys, database credentials, API tokens, and SSH keys for external services — and even some non-secrets like TLS trust stores. Automation with Keywhiz allows us to seamlessly distribute and generate the necessary secrets for our services, which provides a consistent and secure environment, and ultimately helps us ship faster.

A container native solution that strengthens the Trusted Delivery component of container security by integrating secret distribution directly into the container platform.

Keywhiz Server provides JSON APIs for accessing and managing secrets. It is written in Java and based on Dropwizard.;KeywhizFs is a FUSE-based file system, providing secrets as if they are files in a directory. Transparently, secrets are retrieved from a Keywhiz Server using mTLS with a client certificate.;Presenting secrets as files makes Keywhiz compatible with nearly all software. Outside of Keywhiz administration, consumers of secrets only have to know how to read a file.;KeywhizFs stores all secrets in memory only and never persisted to disk. If KeywhizFs is unmounted or the server loses power, all secrets will be safely removed from that server.;To mitigate a Keywhiz Server outage, KeywhizFs maintains a local cache of previously accessed secrets. Unless the server is rebooted or KeywhizFs unmounted, applications can happily continue accessing secrets previously accessed.;Keywhiz CLI is a Java program for Keywhiz administration. Clients, secrets, and groups can be queried, added, removed, or associated with each other. Users can authenticate and use the CLI.;Keywhiz UI is web app for Keywhiz administration, similiar to Keywhiz CLI. The UI is built with AngularJS. Users can authenticate and use the UI.;Keywhiz makes heavy use of mTLS and X509 certificates. It can even help distribute and rotate them for other services! There is the assumption of a PKI system though. If one does not exist or a PKI is wanted for development consider certstrap for a simple, initial PKI.
-
Statistics
GitHub Stars
2.6K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
216
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
12
Stacks
42
Followers
50
Followers
114
Votes
3
Votes
8
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 3
    Fuse FS
Pros
  • 4
    Multi-Host aware
  • 4
    Secure
Integrations
No integrations available
Docker
Docker
Docker Swarm
Docker Swarm

What are some alternatives to Keywhiz, Docker Secrets?

Vault

Vault

Vault is a tool for securely accessing secrets. A secret is anything that you want to tightly control access to, such as API keys, passwords, certificates, and more. Vault provides a unified interface to any secret, while providing tight access control and recording a detailed audit log.

Doppler

Doppler

Doppler’s developer-first security platform empowers teams to seamlessly manage, orchestrate, and govern secrets at scale.

IBM SKLM

IBM SKLM

It centralizes, simplifies and automates the encryption key management process to help minimize risk and reduce operational costs of encryption key management. It offers secure, robust key storage, key serving and key lifecycle management for IBM and non-IBM storage solutions using the OASIS Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP).

AWS Secrets Manager

AWS Secrets Manager

AWS Secrets Manager helps you protect secrets needed to access your applications, services, and IT resources. The service enables you to easily rotate, manage, and retrieve database credentials, API keys, and other secrets throughout their lifecycle.

EnvKey

EnvKey

Securely store config and manage access in an end-to-end encrypted, auto-syncing desktop app. Connect your apps in minutes in any language with an environment variable and a line or two of code.

Knox-app

Knox-app

Knox is a SaaS (Secrets as a Service) that helps you manage your keys, secrets, and configurations. Start in minutes and close the widest security breach. You cannot keep storing secrets in your git repo or sharing them by email or slack me

Infisical

Infisical

It is an open-source, end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) secret manager that enables teams to easily manage and sync their environment variables.

Confidant

Confidant

Confidant is a open source secret management service that provides user-friendly storage and access to secrets in a secure way, from the developers at Lyft.

Torus CLI

Torus CLI

Torus simplifies the modern development workflow enabling you to store, share, and organize secrets across services and environments. With Torus, you can standardize on one tool across all environments. Map Torus to your workflows using projects, environments, services, teams, and machines.

Keeper Secrets Manager

Keeper Secrets Manager

It is a fully managed cloud-based, zero-knowledge platform for securing infrastructure secrets such as API keys, database passwords, access keys, certificates and any type of confidential data.

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